


stringe il cuore della stella morente

by shipwrecks



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Future Fic, THESE INFANTS, allusions to gay will byers because that is my favorite headcanon, i literally don't even like children how did this happen, kind of, other than every written word about my soft souled son mike wheeler, the angst of it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 02:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8038120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipwrecks/pseuds/shipwrecks
Summary: Months go by. Years go by. Everybody else remembers her only as a hero, there when they needed her.
(he shakes the core of a dying star)





	stringe il cuore della stella morente

**Author's Note:**

> ya ever just have a big sad over tiny children on a show you were pretty sure you didn't even like??? the me n stranger things story
> 
> eleven/mike hit me like a ton of bricks so here i am writing the longest thing i've ever written that's RATED T because lol not going to go there even if i age them up...which i did. because lol at me trying my hand at 12 year olds for longer than 500 words or so. i'd call this fix-it fic except that i am clearly a masochist so it is and isn't. ok i will shuffle off this mortal coil now.
> 
> oh well also i [made a mix to go with this](http://8tracks.com/mingtea/stringe-il-cuore-della-stella-morente) because im garbage

It actually takes Mike a couple days to fully accept that she’s gone. He says so, tells Will along with the rest of them about her, but he doesn’t quite believe it, keeps thinking that she’ll be back soon for Eggos and he’ll know she’s there by the sound of the walkie-talkie static in the basement.

He tries to look for her, but he knows it’s no use. He knows where she is.

(He feels useless, wishes he knew what to do to get her back. He rides his bike to the woods, even knowing that it’s a really stupid thing to do, fruitlessly searching for her, as if she’d just be there, waiting expectantly, ready to come home. He yells and yells and yells, sometimes for her but mostly just guttural angry screams. He punches a tree which cracks open the skin on his knuckles and blood pours over his fingers, dark and dangerous like the rage he knows he has within him that he tries so hard to keep below the surface. What is wrong with you, he asks, this time to himself, this time thinks about how maybe he’s been the monster this whole time.

He cleans his hand when he returns home, lets the water run over it for awhile until the sink is no longer red, and wonders how much blood he’s lost. Probably not much, although he feels dizzy, but that may not be the wound.)

Christmas doesn’t feel right, even though Will is back. He still doesn’t seem okay and Mike doesn’t like that he had to give up one friend just to see another again. Maybe Dustin was right about how you could only have one.

New Years is the only day his mom lets him stay up really late so he has everyone over to pull one last campaign over sparkling cider. His heart’s not really in it though, and they can all tell but act like nothing’s wrong. At midnight, Nancy kisses Steve which is gross, but Mike thinks about that one kiss he had with El in the gym. The Christmas lights his dad still hasn’t taken down twinkle and he pretends she’s talking to him from the Upside Down. 

Later, when everyone’s gone, and he’s trying restlessly to go to bed, it’s her eyes—when they softened, no longer fearful; when she trusted him—that finally lull him to sleep. The lights still dance in his dreams, and when his dad eventually puts them away, he steals them for her fort in the basement that he still isn’t ready to dissemble. Keeps the walkie-talkie on just in case, crackling and hissing but there’s never any other noise. 

 

The Snow Ball comes in February. He goes alone, well, with the guys, and they hang out against the wall, anxiously adjusting their suits. Jennifer actually asks Will to dance, which surprises them all, and he trails behind her awkwardly, not knowing how to say much of anything in response. (Mike knows he doesn’t really want to dance, or at least, not with her. But that’s his secret to tell.) Lucas charms another girl in their grade into dancing with him and Dustin finds the snack table. Mike can’t do anything except think of the last time he was in the gym after dark as his leg twitches nervously. Girls circle around him every so often, he’s friends with the miraculous Will Byers after all, but he avoids eye contact with all of them. If they can’t catch his glance, they can’t try to talk to him. Mike promised to take El to the Snow Ball; anybody else feels like betrayal.

He leaves early because he never even wanted to go without her in the first place, the others made him, hoping it would be better than the alternative of him curled up in the fort, desperately listening to every sound the walkie-talkie makes, trying to discern any flicker in the lights. He spends the rest of the night doing just that and it’s not better, not really. But it somehow feels better. Maybe she’s in the fort in the Upside Down, maybe she can somehow tell he’s here too. Maybe she knows how much he wants her to come back.

 

(It’s cold and dark, but she can feel his presence like a warm light. She even thinks she can see him, but that could be her own mind playing tricks on her, desperately creating what is not real. The more time passes, the more she feels like she is being left behind. But _you saved me_ echoes endlessly, reminds her that she’s not here because she belongs here, that this is not her world. She’s not the monster.)

 

Months go by. Years go by. Everybody else remembers her only as a hero, there when they needed her.

Mike thinks about all they could have done, remembers things that never happened. He taught her how to ride her own bicycle, how to read. She makes him laugh and smile. In his head, they’ve spent five years together and the basement fort never came down. In reality, his mom made his dad take it apart only a few months after she disappeared because she was concerned about how it might be “giving him false hope.” Mike thinks if she knew what he dreamt, the fort would be the least of her worries. 

Still, life went on even if he spent an odd amount of time dwelling on someone he knew for only days. The summer before high school gave him a growth spurt that made him more gangly than he was before. Dustin’s teeth came in and Lucas actually has to shave. Will still isn’t really okay, but then, he probably never will be, and neither is Mike. Nobody talks about it anymore, about the girl who changed Mike that Will never met. They all keep going to school and doing well, playing D&D, pretending that their lives could ever be normal again.

It’s weird when he thinks about how it’s been almost five whole years, he’s seventeen now, and he barely remembers anything about his real life—all of it a blur of A.V. equipment and science fair projects and campaigns that he can’t sort out properly through time—but he remembers all the stuff he made up in his head. He often wonders if she still looks the same, if you age in the Upside Down. He can’t picture her older or any differently than how he knows her.

Sometimes he swears he can hear her, when he’s particularly lost in his thoughts, but he knows that can’t be true. It’s one thing to create a parallel life in your head; it’s another to believe she could come back to this one. After five years? No, she’s too smart to have needed that long. If she was coming back, she would have by now.

 

Static comes in on the walkie-talkie in the back of Mike’s closet that hasn’t had anything but a dead battery in years.

 

He’s hanging out in Nancy’s old car that’s now his by the woods, something he’s taken to doing a lot ever since learning to drive. He keeps the dial on a station just slightly out of range, the fizzle that accompanies every song comforting him. He’s in his own head when the radio cuts out the music; it takes him a bit to realize all he can hear is noise. He shivers in a way that has nothing to do with temperature because it’s July. The tree branches sway even though he can’t feel any wind.

And then, almost industrial, almost blending in with the static, he hears it. _Promise._

He recognizes the voice, can’t forget it, and knows this is somehow different than the times he thought he heard her. He senses where it’s coming from, and follows it into the forest. He still feels crazy, even if it feels different. Why would she talk to him now? Why would it take her so long to try to communicate—

But she isn’t trying.

She’s right there.

The static stops. Mike can’t talk. He steps on a fallen branch and the crunch under his shoe is cacophonous. Her eyes, that soften immediately as she sees him, blink once. Twice. Mike opens his mouth to say something; it just hangs open because right now, there’s nothing he can say. She’s older, just like him. So you can age in the Upside Down, he files away, not knowing how to take in any more than that.

“Hello, Mike.”

She speaks softly and he can barely hear her even though the rest of the world is dead silent. He feels tears well up because he knows it’s really her. He isn’t even sure how he knows, because she does look different than she did, and who knows what the Upside Down is capable of creating to fuck with him, but he knows.

She runs towards him and grabs him, hugs him, he realizes, except that she’s clinging so tight. He can rest his chin on top of her head which feels like the strangest thing of all because he’s only ever been her height. She fits neatly in his arms, like she should be there, like she’s been for the last five years in his head. He’s not sure how long they’re like that, but it feels like time no longer means anything. They could stay there forever. He wouldn’t mind.

 

He brings her to the Byers’ instead of his own house because Will’s mom knows her better and he won’t have to explain much. His parents are aware of her, of course, but he’s not entirely sure they believe in her existence because all they know is secondhand from Mike and one photo the Bad Men showed them that they’re still not positive is real. Besides, El trusts her, or at least, trusted her once, which he thinks will help because she seems on edge and untrusting. He assumes that is for good reason; if she’s been in the Upside Down this whole time, who knows what she’s been through.

Mrs. Byers is speechless for a moment when she opens the door. Just for a moment though, then she immediately switches into gear, ushering Mike and El in quickly, already talking about running her a bath and calling Hopper to bring home extra food. She leaves them in the living room, and they’re alone again, but being in Will’s house makes Mike feel safer than the woods. He can actually begin to process what’s going on. He peers over at El from the other side of the couch (he wasn’t sure what Mrs. Byers would think if they sat so close now that they’re no longer twelve years old) and really sees her for the first time.

She’s still thin, too thin, but her body isn’t as boyish as it was the last time he saw her. He guesses that is to be expected, but he didn’t expect it all the same. He’s not sure how she got the t-shirt she’s currently wearing, but it swallows her up while somehow just skimming her thighs. He tells himself not to stare at them, that he has no right to her after all this time. But he looks at her, curling into herself like she’s unsure of the space her new body now occupies in this world. Her hair is longer, uneven and skimming her shoulders mostly, although it looks like she’s been cutting it herself with whatever sharp object she could find. She looks like a girl. Not a joke of a girl, the way they dressed her up, but an actual girl.

Still pretty, Mike thinks absentmindedly, and El smiles a small smile as if she can read his mind.

 

Dustin and Lucas can’t believe it when they see her (and they know now the world plays tricks on them, that seeing isn’t always believing). They stand in shock on Will’s front porch as El says hello and Mike watches her laugh at their astonishment. It’s funny to see their gang back together, the same but different. Mike doesn’t feel different; in fact, he often doesn’t think he’s changed that much in the past five years. Not like the others.

And he feels that now, already regressing into a version of himself he’s never really left behind—stubbornly refusing to fully grow up without her, worried that she wouldn’t recognize him if he did, worried she wouldn’t like him anymore, and now she’s here. Now he can begin to grow.

 

He still can’t make sense of any of this, and El isn’t saying much about where’s she been. She’s not saying much of anything, honestly, and it’s sometimes as if she forgot the limited vocabulary Mike taught her years ago. They never have to reexplain anything, but she tends towards small words and short sentences. He doesn’t exactly know what to say to her, so he lets Dustin and Lucas, even Will sometimes, do most of the talking as they all begin to hang out again.

He used to imagine this moment, back when he believed she’d return. Then he gave up on ever seeing her again, but that didn’t stop him from pretending, playing this out all kinds of ways. But no amount of dreaming could have prepared him for it to be true, and now he’s reluctantly silent even though all he wants to do is talk to her forever.

 

He’s thankful that it’s summer and he has entire days with her, uninterrupted by something as trivial as high school. He’s finally doing all the things he imagined with her. He brought her his favorite books from the library and she reads what she can aloud, tentative, unsure of herself at first. She’s riding Nancy’s old bicycle, slightly rusted but pink, which El loves.

But the kiss—now five years old, would have been lost to time if Mike didn’t know it as The Kiss, his only kiss—lingers in the back of his mind, and he’s hesitant to mention it to her, or anyone. He can’t figure out how much she understands about kissing, figures she must know that that’s not something just friends do, tries to reassure himself that she gets that he meant something like that for her. They don’t talk about them (as if they are even a _them_ , Mike reminds himself) and the guys don’t ask, they gave up on what him and El are a long time ago, just look at Mike pointedly anytime she comes up in conversation with adults and he stares at his shoes like they’re suddenly the most interesting things in the world.

He likes spending time with her, even if he’s awkward and doesn’t know what to do with his hands and moments are stilted. Everything makes him feel like he’s standing on a precipice, like he’s back on that cliff of the quarry, one foot forward and ready to fall.

 

There’s a night where she stays over at the Wheeler’s because Nancy still hasn’t gone back to school for fall semester and she’s helping El out adjusting as a fellow girl. There’s a lot she doesn’t understand there, but neither do the boys. The two of them watch John Hughes movies and Nancy goes through boxes of old clothes with her to find what she likes.

Mike is trying not to interrupt, because it isn’t his place, but he can’t help but need extra stuff from the kitchen so he has to walk by the living room. She catches his glance, and they just look at each other for awhile. Nancy’s in the bathroom so there’s nothing stopping them from staring, curious and confused. He feels exposed, like she can see right through him and knows exactly what he’s thinking. He’s pretty sure she can’t actually do that, or at least, isn’t doing it, but he can tell she knows something is off about him. But then he hears the faucet running and the door opening, Nancy rejoining them all, and he quickly heads for the basement to rebuild the fort, one of the few things El made a point to talk about.

He’s done and sitting in it, leg twitching, a nervous habit that he doesn’t realize started after her, when she sneaks up to him quietly and his heart flips funny—the universe kind enough to let him chalk it up to surprise. She sits down next to him and they are still silent. They’re easily too big for the fort, even individually, but he hasn’t built one since before she left and out of habit, it’s the same size. They’re the closest they’ve been since she came back. Her hand is on his but he’s not sure if that’s an accident and he doesn’t want to assume. He doesn’t know where he belongs in her life anymore, where she’s supposed to be in his.

She squeezes his hand deliberately, looks at it and then at him, and perhaps she is trying to tell him.

 

They’re doing normal things with her, showing her that life in this world is not always labs and monsters, that it is a better place than the Upside Down. August is sweltering, but they decide to do a campout in Will’s backyard anyway. Mrs. Byers feels better when he’s home at night, and the rest of their parents don’t fully understand just what happened to them so long ago, so they still let them stay over. And of course, they’re older now, something Mike has to remind himself more often now that El’s back.

He feels both twelve and seventeen at the same time, an uneasy rush of feelings both crush, _like_ -like and something heavier, hungrier that he never could have understood when he first met her. He tries to push that away, asks himself how well he really knows her, maybe even ever knew her, but that doesn’t always work.

In the backyard, they pitch tents and show El how to try to catch fireflies and have lightsaber battles—her presence making them all act a little younger. Eventually, she sits on the grass and just looks at the night sky; Mike joins her, keeping his distance, but she scoots towards him and their skinny legs knock together as his fingers brush across hers when he readjusts a hand he’s leaning back on. It all feels tense and too close, and he doesn’t know if there’s any amount of time that’s going to make him better at this.

Lucas explained to her what stars were and she’s fascinated by them. The idea of something so far away that isn’t dark, is pure light.

Mike can see constellations reflecting in her eyes, like she knows secrets beyond this galaxy, which, to be fair, she does. She turns her head to him and reaches her hand up to slide her thumb over a smattering of freckles across his cheek. “Stars,” she whispers and he makes a face as if to say otherwise. The freckles are in fact a sore spot for him, something that remind him of his younger self, a manifestation of his inability to grow up, and they don’t feel like they match the rest of him as he currently is.

She leans in before he realizes what’s going on and their mouths touch and for Mike, it could have been forever. He feels her chapped lips and wonders if she notices the stubble he swears must be coming in by now. One of his hands fumbles awkwardly at her wrist; he wants to touch her, put a hand on her hip and feel soft skin and goosebumps and the promise he’s kept for so long, but he isn’t sure how this is supposed to go.

(There would be other kisses later, slow and lazy, the kind that make Mike's head fuzzy around the edges. And more later still with an urgency that only years of making up for lost time can require. They can learn this together, stumble through it with laughing and sharp inhales and wandering hands. This is a new world to explore, a mess of tangled limbs and unsaid truths that bubble up to the surface when they are so close. He will reach out and she will bend into his touch, never understanding how he could have her curse but on him it's a gift. But for now. For now.)

She pulls away and his breath catches. He’s eternally and ridiculously grateful that the rest of the boys are distracted enough to not notice this. He knows they’ve kissed girls before, well, some of them have, but this is…not like that. He feels suspended in time, just as likely to revert to the boy Eleven met before as not, and he’s afraid the others will do the same.

“Like you did,” she offers as a break in the silence, almost a question.

“Like I did,” he replies, a little bit breathless. The heat is stifling, he feels a bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck, and the moment feels on a knife’s edge. But El has moved her gaze back to the real stars, and the colors of the lightsabers throw green-blue-red across her face, sharp and soft at the same time.

Without needing to look for it, she takes his hand in hers, holds it tight, and he remembers something like this years ago, running, exhilarated, scared.

His heart pounds the same.


End file.
